|THE _Violetta_ was towed out into deep water. Captain Jansen used some
badly broken English on the condition of his starboard rail. Not but
that he had expected more damage than he found, but damaging a ship
by chopping a tree down upon her, hurt him in a sensitive point of
seamanship.
There seemed to be no leakage, for all that war-dance with the elements,
and mad teetering on a windward shore. Still he preferred to pass the
night in the bay--the weather being uncertain--and tow the _Violetta_ on
the morrow to St. Pierre for repairs.
It was evening, and I stood watching the moon rise peacefully and look
down on the gleaming but troubled waters of the little bay. Placid and
poetic she went up among her attendant stars. The wooded shore lay about
us dark and mysterious.
“Let me,” I said to myself, “recapitulate. Presbyterianism is
insufficient. Scientific celebrity is insufficient. The precise
conscience and balance of rectitude are to the lover as a wire twitchup
to the hungry rabbit. Action, sharp decision, the habit, so to speak, of
getting there, these are what appeal to Mrs. Mink.”
Now, along those lines Professor Simpson was no slouch of a rival. In
point of character he was hard as nails; in decision and action he was
energetic and exact. Yet he had failed. He had speared himself, as it
were, on the angle of an impractical conscience. But where did I
come in? I, who in point of character was a semiliquid jelly fish, an
invertebrate protozoan, whose nature was to float on the heaving and
uncertain sea of humour, bathed in the moonlight of poetry, devouring
the chance drift of knowledge, sucking philosophy out of rock;
whose centre of personality was loose; whose mind was as untidy as a
cuttlefish; how could I appeal to Mrs. Mink? On the evidence so far, I
had but one strong point, namely a practical conscience, a conscience
which, having always treated me with a great deal of--shall I say, with
a great deal of tact?--was a conscience that----
At this point in my reflection Mrs. Mink came on deck.
When doubtful in whist, play trumps. When doubtful in any other
situation, ask Mrs. Mink. Her counsel is always trumps.
“Mrs. Mink,” I said, as she came and stood beside me at the rail, “I am
in doubt.”
“What about?”
“The question is this: If a disorderly cuttlefish has proposed marriage
to one of those small neat birds who yet have the knack of making
themselves at home in a wilderness of waves, and by sailors are called
'Mother Carey's chickens'; if so far as the cuttlefish can see he has
only succeeded in producing in Mother Carey's chicken a state of
unconvinced reflection; if he knows his structure to be floppy and his
nature sloppy, what, in fact, do you think he should do?”
“I don't think you're a cuttlefish.”
“Ha! I don't insist on the figure.”
“You're dreadfully untidy.”
“I am.”
Mrs. Mink was silent.
“Should I imitate Professor Simpson to the summit of Presbyterianism, or
a green parrot to the bottom of reprobation? Should I----”
“I don't like Professor Simpson, or the green parrot either.”
“Well, then, what do you think we had better do next?”
Mrs. Mink was long silent. At last she said, thoughtfully:
“I think we'd better go to Trinidad.”
“What for?”
“Why, they're English in Trinidad, aren't they?”
“Good God, madam! what if they are?”
“You mustn't talk that way!” she said, sharply. “Of course Catholics may
be good men, but, still, I shouldn't like it in French.”
“Like what?”
“We'd better be married in Trinidad.”
There you are, satisfactory, inclusive, concise! I ask: “How shall I
attain my soul's desire?” She answers: “Be married in Trinidad.”
We left Professor Simpson at St. Pierre. He was intending to climb Mont
Pelée and extract knowledge from its oracular mouth. If that solemn,
grim, stony, and sometimes irascible sphinx of a volcano started in
to talk to him, it's possible that the volcano had the last of the
argument. Perhaps not. I haven't heard. He was a very persistent
logician. Maybe he meant to cast himself forlornly into the crater.
The idea is luminous, romantic. But I think, on the whole, that he did
nothing of the kind.
Mrs. Mink says she would never have accepted him, and was merely vexed
to see him outwit me, which it must be admitted he did. But my feelings
are like those of a man who has succeeded by a narrow margin.
We lie now in harbour at Trinidad, whose green hills rise sumptuously
out of the blue of the Caribbean. The future promises all happiness and
varied interests; among which interests, I suspect, will be the coming
Mrs. Ulswater's masterly reorganisation of me. Do I flatter myself,
or does she, as it almost seems, look forward to that task with real
enthusiasm? Wonderful woman!
Adieu--Ulswater.
P. S. The argument from analogy was the sound one--the tropics, the
temperate zone, and the intentions of Providence. Convince her of your
imperative need of her, and you have made the imperative appeal. So far
I see.